IMTL
Image Protect was born as a solution to the rampant infringement of digital image copyright ownership on the internet. Images are used with impunity by everyone online all the time. Most of this use is technically grounds for some sort of legitimate legal action if someone were to take the time to pursue it. IMTL was once dedicated to being that someone, recovering huge legal value on behalf of participating clientele (the image rightsholders being exploited en masse).
However, after some period, the company came to understand that this business model, while workable, provided insufficient ROI over time. Recognizing this obstacle, the company shifted to a new model based on the market for in-image advertisement placement.
In short, the company has created a “marketplace” for digital images powered by technology (that the company has already successfully developed) to embed digital ads within images in a manner that makes it impossible to copy the image using the computer’s clipboard function or a screenshot tool without passing along the embedded ad capability. That technology means the company can now offer images for free to prospective image users and promise eventual monetization of those images to image creators.
That assures that both image creators and image users get what they want: Image users can use and share high-quality digital images for free and digital image creators can get paid. And Image Protect can profit by extracting a piece of this equation – think of the image users as Uber passengers, the image creators as Uber drivers, and Image Protect as “Uber”.
Both the image creator and IMTL end up owning partial rights to a massive piece of advertisement-ready internet real estate, with a potential value in the billions of dollars as traction builds. There are no genuinely direct competitors, and several internationally renowned photographers have already signed on as early adopters.
In-image ad market is worth between $50-108B right now and growing. Other ad markets are shrinking.
The above describes the “Fotofy Strategy”. That strategy is really two segments” “marketplace and platform” and “cloud services”. The platform is the Fotofy Marketplace, where image creators can post images, and users can use and share them for free, spreading the future/potential in-image advertisement footprint.
The “Legacy Model Strategy” represents the fact that the company has a ton of expertise in infringement enforcement, as well as a large book of potential-revenue-producing “cases”. It has forged two key partnerships to monetize those assets – the most interesting being its partnership with RYDE Holdings, the creator and operator of the KODAKOne Image Rights Management Platform.